Now that you’re a master of the Chronosphere, here comes the challenging bit.

How to Travel Through Time (Backwards)

STEPS

Invent faster-than-light space travel. This may seem like a daunting first step, but keep at it.

Make yourself a futuristic costume. Get your mom to help.

Accelerate your vessel to a minimum speed of Warp 6.2 toward the nearest star. You may find the Sun to be convenient.

Set aside your preconceived notions. You will be moving so fast that the star’s gravitational pull will have a negligible effect on your flight path. Ignore this and jam down the pedal.

Break away. At the moment that the stellar mass fills your viewscreen, turn sharply to the right. The resultant slingshot trajectory will send you hurtling backwards in time. If you already haven’t synchronized your watch, do so now.

Slow down. Selecting a precise reentry to normal space-time can be tricky. We’ve had good luck eyeballing it.

Success! You’re in the past! Watch out for Romans and/or dinosaurs!

TIPS

When designing your costume, avoid the unitard. You may think that it looks “spacey,” but you’ll require an additional crew member to handle the zipper.

If you’ve watched any amount of late night TV, you’ve undoubtedly been exposed to Bob, the spokesdick for Enzyte “male enhancement.” I’m not entirely sure what it is about Bob that creeps me out. Sure, the fixed, Joker-like smile is a major component. But there’s something else–makeup? lighting? his equally disturbing sexual partner?–that makes me feel there’s a thin layer of ooze coating my TV screen.

Okay, you’ve probably already seen this on about fifty different websites by now, but I thought it was funny enough to post one more time: Andy Samberg’s ode to shit blowing up and heroes failing to care about it, “Cool Guys Don’t Look at Explosions.”

Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy and Firefly, today unveiled his latest project, an online film called Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Apparently it’s something he conceived during the writers’ strike and did on the cheap. He recruited Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion to play along as arch-villain Dr. Horrible and hero Captain Hammer, respectively. And…it’s a musical. (Nothing wrong with that; Whedon’s musical episode of Buffy was one of that series’ high points.)

Act One went live today, with Act Two debuting Thursday and Act Three on Saturday. (Saturday?) It’s only up through Sunday, though you can buy the whole thing via iTunes.

I thought it was kinda “meh” at first, as Neil spends the first few minutes talking to the camera answering his viewer mail. Once the music begins to kick in, however, the energy picks up. I particularly enjoyed the love song in which Dr. Horrible pines for the girl at the laundromat while threatening to stop the world with his freeze ray.

Catch it before it’s gone. (That is, if you can overcome the site traffic!)

The CBS comedy How I Met Your Mother had an uneven third season, which I attribute in part to the interruption of the writers’ strike, as well as to the last-minute substitution of Sarah Chalke for the AWOL Alicia Silverstone as Ted’s new girlfriend. (Not that Chalke’s in any way a bad choice, just that her ongoing commitment to Scrubs meant that she was largely off-screen during the early days of Ted and Stella’s romance.)

That said, I’ve really enjoyed some of the online jokes planted by the show’s producers. Viral websites are nothing new, but what I find so appealing about the HIMYM tie-ins is that they’re less about promoting the show than they are about extending its humor into the real world. Plus, most of them include a silly song.

A couple of weeks back, there was a throwaway gag about the characters stumbling across a website called guyforceshiswifetodressinagarbagebagforthenextthreeyears.com, and indeed, the site actually exists. There’s not much there aside from a slideshow of a happy, young couple (played by a couple of HIMYM crew members), one of whom is wearing a garbage bag blouse. But what sells the joke is the ridiculous song playing in the background: producer Carter Bays croons in French while a breathy-voiced woman intones “garbage bag.” (A translation is available, and the song itself can be downloaded.)